


Every Little Star

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Drabbles, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Inktober 2019, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, Trans Claude von Riegan, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-15 18:10:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21257474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Claude tended, throughout his childhood, to keep his thoughts to himself and his heart hidden. But that didn't mean he wasn't thinking or feeling.-Collection of character study ficlets written for Inktober





	1. White Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! :) I did a Claudetober prompt list for Inktober this year, where I wrote a single page in my A5 notebook for each day. Most of the first chapter is pre-timeskip (with one au) and most of the second chapter is post-timeskip, plus a preview for my next project (for NaNoWriMo) at the end. There are some spoilers involved, so keep that in mind, but please enjoy!

Claude was hopeless at keeping secrets when he was a kid. He didn’t have many friends, sure, but he used to run his mouth all the time and he was usually so excited about receiving forbidden information that he forgot the forbidden part and just told everyone he knew.

He didn’t know exactly when he started swallowing his words, but it happened before he came to Fódlan. Information stopped being something to share and started being something to hoard.

What other people didn’t know about him were just things they couldn’t use to hurt him. If he kept his secrets close to his chest so no one could see them then the truth couldn’t come back to bite him.

If he was being honest, he recognise that it turned him into a bit of a compulsive liar. His deepest, darkest secrets, his fears, all the things that really were dangerous, became indistinguishable from the name of his favourite tea, or whether he was the son of the Duke’s son or daughter (it wasn’t even a secret. He didn’t know why he didn’t tell people up front).

Secrets weren’t so fun when he couldn’t share them with anyone. He just had to hold the information close to his chest like...he didn’t know. A bride with a bouquet. But he held the secrets so close that they rotted in his hands. 

The secrets left him with nothing but dirty hands, stained all over with deeds that no one else could fathom, and a stench that meant no one came close.

He supposed that was what he’d wanted, to protect himself. But it was terribly lonely.

-

Training was something good, usually. Something mindless. When Claude got so caught up in his thoughts that he could barely breathe, he would extricate himself from his pile of books and read. And read, and read, and read. And then he’d realise that when he’d meant to do something else he'd managed to get distracted again, so he’d put down the book with a quiet feeling of shame and go to do some training.

When he trained, his breathing evened out a little. He could focus on the tension of his bow string rather than the tension in his shoulders, the steady thunk of arrows embedding themselves in targets. He wasn’t a perfect archer yet, and honestly, that felt like a good thing for once.

Claude spent perhaps a little too much time worrying about what others thought of him. If he trained as a perfect archer, the purpose of is training would be clear for everyone to see. He did it to escape everything else. But while his skills still needed to be honed, he could pass it off as just that.

So when his thoughts began to overwhelm him, when he couldn’t sleep off his bone deep exhaustion, he trained. He trained until his limbs numbed, until the numbness spread to his mind, and finally he could place his bow to the side without his fears surging back.

Then he could drink a cup of tea, watch the sky from his bedroom window, and finally sleep before the dawn touched the clouds. He knew the Professor could tell when he’d been training into the night, because they assigned him to book work, but they never said a word.

-

Something that a lot of people from Fódlan tended to pick up on in Claude’s behaviour was how laid back he tended to act. They’d call him out for always ‘lounging about’ and ‘never taking anything seriously’.

He envied their ignorance, he supposed. The idea that he spent all his time slacking off was...well. It would be nice if he could. Some dedicated slacking off time would be perfect, actually.

Lounging out in the sunlight, not a care in the world for all the opportunities passing him by. He would love to be able to see the world like that, but in a place like Garreg Mach, every second was a connection to make, a skill to develop, information to put away for another time.

Even when people caught him lounging about, it was always for another purpose. Usually to de-stress, sometimes to catch some rest between classes because he’d been until three in the morning scratching out some new findings on the history of Fódlan (he was so lose to some kind of breakthrough, he just knew it).

It was always when they caught him that they called him out on it. No one ever said a word if they caught sight of him in the library or training grounds Perhaps they’d comment that it was good to see him working hard for once, as if this wasn’t his default setting that he wished he could turn off.

He supposed it worked to his advantage, though the more people who underestimated him just meant he could trick more people with less effort. The appearance of laziness didn’t have to be a hurdle to jump.

-

“You want me to wear...this?” Claude asked, cringing slightly just looking at the mustard coloured garment in front of him. No, mustard was a generous word for it. Mud was perhaps more accurate.

It was, frankly, hideous. Completely over the top, loaded with layers (not that Claude minded layers, all the better for hiding himself) and embellishments and upturned cuffs.

“Yes,” the Professor said, and their lips had an amused upturn that wasn’t quite a smile. Not just yet. “The other house leaders are doing the same. It’s traditional for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.”

“Aw, Teach, you know what I think about those kinds of things,” he said. If anything, he’d rather wear something else. The flexibility of the archer uniform, for one, gave him ease of movement and better range.

“If I recall, you think those kinds of things can ‘stuff it’,” they said. Their amused smile which was now definitely a smile did not fade.

“So you were listening!” he crowed, leaning back on his heels. Hopefully the battle was won.

“Yes,” they relied, “and you’ll be wearing this regardless. I know you think little of convention, and I feel the same, but it’s not just abut us.

“The Golden Deer are the underdog class, the commoner class, whatever you wish to call it. Your classmates appreciate the lack of strict rules on the most part, but they’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of barbs lately. I don’t want them feeling inferior on my watch.”

Claude sighed. He looked at the outfit, ugly and gaudy and representing...a lot of things he didn’t like. “Okay.”

-

Claude quite liked having a reputation for schemes. It was one he’d built up at home, in a way, and he was happy to build it all again at the Officers Academy.

It made a good way of protecting himself, almost, pre-empting all the ways that people could try and get to him/

People tended to think he was lacking in scruples anyway, so when he just built himself around that, no one could disappoint him by thinking little of him. It wasn’t prejudice if it was his persona. The only thing people could do was impress him by seeing through that.

The other thing about being a schemer was that it was, well, fun. He liked being on top of everything, knowing exactly what was going on, and having plans fall straight into his lap. It helped him feel in control of this strange, unpredictable world.

...also, it was fun to see how people reacted to his schemes. How people would always jump afoot in the air, or laugh, or call him clever Claude wouldn’t claim to be immune to flattery, after all; it was nice when people saw him as someone intelligent rather than as a fool, clowning around.

That was the bad part of scheming, really. When people thought he was here for a laugh. When someone described him as ‘here for a good time, not a long time’, as if this constant scheming wasn’t the only way he’d stayed alive this long. His schemes were important, and if they was who he was now, he couldn’t really complain.

-

If he was being honest, when he was growing up Claude had tried to avoid axe training. It wasn’t that he cared so little for the traditions of Almyra (if anything he cared a little too much about what they thought of him), it was just...it seemed almost dangerous, to him, to have such a fixation on a weapon that could kill with a single swing.

An axe could kill without thinking. A singe movement in the wrong direction in the heat of battle could take an ally’s arm clean off. That was the reason he preferred the bow. You had to think, had to watch, had to see what was going on. But that only lasted as long as his skill remained average.

It was while he was training at the Academy that he realised archery had become as simple as breathing. He could nock an arrow and let it fly, accurately, without processing what the enemy in front of him really looked like.

That was wen he asked the Professor to teach him the axe. There were plenty of people in his class already learning it, so it wasn’t exactly strange, but…

Swinging an axe felt shockingly natural. Like it was made for him. He’d never tried, really, back at home. So he was basically new to it, but his skill outstripped Felix’s in a matter of weeks, much to his classmate’s chagrin.

He was made for the axe just as he was made for the bow, and Claude didn’t know if that scared him - or if it should.

-

“Sacred earth, Fódlan’s dances really are boring,” Claude said. It was a means of starting up conversation with the man he’d just sidled up next to - Dedue, whose eyes were fixed on Dimitri. He spared Claude only a glance.

“This is interesting, as they go,” Dedue said. It was more words than Claude had heard from him in a while. More opinion, for sure.

“Do you dance?” he asked. He wasn’t expecting much of a response, but his attempt to speak to Cyril about the same topic had been brushed off.

“No,” came the short but not exactly unkind response.

“Not ever, or not anymore?” It was...Claude knew he was pushing his luck. Dedue wasn’t exactly forthcoming about information about his past.

“Not anymore.”

“Tell me something about the dances of Duscur, then?” he asked. He’d got a lot further than he’d expected to. Maybe he’d judged Dedue wrong.

Dedue’s eyes were fixed sharply on Dimitri, watching his every movement as he danced with partner after partner. “Perhaps another time,” he said. “If there was ever the space, I would show you.”

Now that was interesting. That was something Claude had never expected to hear. Maybe Dedue...wanted more than Claude had thought he did. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, his words half a warning and half a jest.

“I would expect no less.”

-

In Claude’s room, there was an orchestrated mess. Sure, he liked reading and he tended to throw things (gently, because these books were old!) to the side when he wanted to pursue another idea, but that wasn’t it. If someone walked into his room and thought ‘messy’, thought ‘can’t clean up after himself’, they wouldn’t look further.

In a drawer at the bottom of his bookshelf, he kept underwear. At the bottom of that was a false panel. Under that was more underwear. And under that was jewellery.

There were only a couple of pieces. A necklace from the Goneril family, to welcome him to the nobles of the Leicester Alliance. The ring his uncle had worn before his death, that Claude would one day wear himself.

A bracelet. Made of simple silver he now knew came from the mines in the Hevring lands. On one side, the bracelet held the shape of a crescent moon, the Riegan Crest. It was studded with emeralds.

The other side was the real reason the item was hidden. There, dotted with diamonds, was the emblem of the Almyran royal family. He had no idea if anyone would recognise it. He did know that if it was stolen, he would never, ever forgive himself. It had been a gift his father modified for his mother, and it was made to commemorate his birth.

-

Claude wasn't exactly sure why he settled on the nickname ‘Teach’ for Professor Byleth. It was incredibly disrespectful, sure, and the half-persona half-him wasn’t often inclined to respect (internally he still cringed a little, but he didn’t think figures deserved respect without proving themselves anyway) but he didn't call the other professors by a nickname. Just Teach.

He had pulled it out of the air, really. He had to be casual. Had to impress. It was the thing the Golden Deer had that the other two houses couldn’t compete with. A complete lack of propriety that would hopefully appeal to a mercenary who was also a commoner.

He didn’t know why it had worked, but he wasn’t going to complain. Byleth was much more proper than they’d first appeared to him, cutting bandits down with the vestiges of sleep still clear in their eyes.

And yet they didn’t mind the nickname. Didn’t mind being called Teach. They didn’t mind the easy, obviously fake smile. They didn’t mind the hollow laugh.

He knew they saw it all, of course. They were Teach, all seeing and all knowing. They understood every emotion, while never showing one themselves.

Maybe they were judging him for the name, evaluating him silently. He didn’t know, but he sure hoped he’d find out one day.

-

He liked Fódlan, sometimes. He swore he did. He also hated it, because he was Claude von Riegan and he had to call shit like Fódlan’s into question sometimes.

People got angry at him when he went on marches or protests sometimes. They asked him why he wasn't thankful for the country he lived in, and why he couldn’t go back home and leave them to it if he didn’t like it here.

Sometimes, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t go home, not really. He wasn’t ready to face up to the fact that, back home, his hands would be tied, his actions ever more scrutinised. He valued his freedom, if nothing else.

And equally, sometimes, he wondered why he bothered. Why didn’t he just go home to a different flavour of racism? A familiar angle on transphobia? It was no better here than there. Fódlan was no paradise.

But he couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Couldn’t turn around and go back. He had come to Fódlan to learn and change things and he would succeed in a least one of them before he even considered getting on a plane to go home.

He had his work cut out for him. Fódlan was stuck royally up its own ass and wouldn’t be coming out soon. But he had to keep at it. He had to.

-

If there was one thing Claude had absolutely, 100% zero interest in while he was at the Academy, it was romance. He didn’t have the time or the energy to work out whether his flirting was genuine or just for charm or a reaction or something and he was no big fan of scrutinising his every action in a relationship. He would feel like a liar even if he never lied.

And yet, if he was being perfectly honest with himself or anyone else that may ask (he was usually not all that honest if someone asked him such a personal question), he had barely thought about romance at all until people started talking about the Goddess Tower.

It was a cute ‘legend’. He’d done some digging and it turned out that the couple in question were real, though records were rather hard to find. Which was odd, considering those involved.

But anyway, it wasn’t until that month that he’d thought about romance at all. And then he realised he hadn’t missed the pressure at all. It hadn’t even crossed his mind as to whether he wanted something like that.

He didn’t want to repeat the legend because he didn’t care. And he didn’t know how to feel about that realisation. It felt strange.

-

Nature ran in Claude’s blood. Loving and respecting the world around him came more naturally (ha) than basically anything else in the world.

He just loved everything so much. When it was just him and the sun and the wind in the trees, everything in the world felt...right. He felt like he didn’t have to pretend. Didn’t have to hide. What did the earth care if his parents were raised on the opposite sides of a mountain range? It didn’t care at all, of course, because what was there to care about? Not a damn thing.

When he was amongst nature, he felt at peace. Even when it was unfamiliar nature, like the tall trees of Fódlan.

Something just felt right, in a way he couldn’t quite understand or explain. Like he could sink into the earth, if only for a while, and no one would judge. No one would care.

He knew that other people didn't see it in quite the same way. They weren’t exactly hostile or even uncaring to the world around them, they just didn’t feel like he did. Maybe it was the same way that he didn’t feel like they did about the Church of Seiros.

It was the closest he got to understanding why people thought those who didn’t believe were wrong. Because he felt that those who hurt nature were wrong, with no exceptions.

-

He was heir to two nations, and if Claude was being absolutely frank with himself, that utterly terrified him. He was afraid of so many things, and there was so much that could go wrong.

Anything could happen to him, and if it did, two countries would be left without an heir. What would happen in the Alliance, in Fódlan, if he were to fall somewhere against bandits or unknown foes? What would happen to Almyra - would they ever even know? Ever even care?

He knew he was more than just an heir to his parents, but not his grandparents. They had no way of contacting his father or mother, and the two of them would be left with nothing on his whereabouts. They knew, currently, that he’d made it to Fódlan. But if he missed a letter, what would they do? What if he missed two? What if he vanished from their lives with not a word, leaving them, finally, without a child?

Being the heir, being important...he told people it didn’t matter, but it was the only reason he was still around. He would never bother with all the things that came from being in Fódlan if he wasn’t important. He wouldn’t plan like he did if he had nowhere to go back to (or maybe he would. He’d like to think he would still strive for what was right even if he had nowhere to go if it went wrong, but he didn’t know).

It was the kind of thing where he knew he’d been blessed by circumstance. He just didn’t know why he couldn’t be happy with that.

-

“Claude, you look tense,” Byleth said. They were leaning over the table, unknowingly offering him his favourite tea. Or maybe knowingly, except he never told anyone he liked it. He always drank it on his own.

It was, perhaps, a little silly of him. No one could tell all his secrets from his favourite type of tea (he tried to tell himself that, but knowing that Dimitri only really enjoyed chamomile had told him a lot). And yet, he…

“I’m not all that bothered,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. “I don’t know why you’d think I‘m tense, Professor. An afternoon with my favourite mystery? I’m loving this.”

Byleth inclined an eyebrow. They knew he was running his mouth because he was being insincere. For someone who never expressed emotions, they sure understood people pretty well. “Do you like the tea?”

“It smells good,” he said, catching himself before he could start tapping his fingers on the ceramic of the cup. It did smell good. He loved how this tea smelled. It reminded him of home.

“I’m glad,” they said. “The merchant said this tea sells poorly, and only one or two students buy it, but I thought you’d enjoy it.”

He felt like they could see right through him, but he took a sip of tea anyway. A smile spread onto his face. A real one. “I see you do,” the Professor said, and there was a soft smile on their own face. “It’s made from pine needles, you know? An odd ingredient.”

“Perhaps not for everyone,” he said. He was tired of hiding.


	2. Verdant Wind

He’d really, really missed his Golden Deer. Their carefree smiles, their warm laughter. The lack of judgement, the noise they created in a room together that just felt like verbalised sunlight. Claude had never loved anything so much in his life.

He hadn’t even realised how the feeling had crept up on him. He wasn’t used to feeling affection, feeling excited to see people. He wasn’t used to love.

That was what it was. Love, for every single one of them. Love for their happiness, support through their sadness. Loving them for their good traits and their flaws. Their smiles. Their tears.

It had been five years since he’d seen some of them, nearly, and he had never really been happier. He’d barely even known that he’d needed to see them again, how much this reunion meant to him.

He hoped they felt the same way. From the ease of their laughter he caught himself hoping that they did. Would they be so happy with each other in such a dark time if they didn’t love each other? Half the time he felt like they’d been at each other’s throats at school. So why was this so happy now?

He tried not to question it too much. If he thought about it too much, maybe the feelings would fade, and he didn’t want his happiness to be fleeting. He just...he loved them all, and that warmth he felt was precious.

-

Claude barely had any time to himself these days. Rushing here, rushing there, doing everything he could to make sure he knew as much as possible and had a part in as many plans as possible. That was the only way to secure his part in this war so he understood.

But when he did have time to himself...he stared at the paper in front of him. There was barely anything on it. It was a work in progress, and the ‘work’ part of that was gong very slowly.

Every time he looked at the pieces he’d started, he wanted to tear them up and start again. Then he looked at them again and wondered if he could ever get good enough to match what he’d already written.

Writing poetry was a secret passion of his. He never told anyone about it, never showed anyone. Just worked on it in the gaps between the rest of his life.

He rarely liked his work. He felt like a child, reading it over and over. He liked to think he had a way with language, but word craft wasn’t really his thing. He could use words verbally, combined with body language and hinting and context and all the many things that formed a social interaction.

At the same time, it was refreshing to keep it to himself and be mediocre. It was nice, not to have to make it perfect.

-

Some days, Claude still felt a lot like he was an outsider to Fódlan, and nothing told him that more than when he faced Edelgard down. She told him he knew nothing of the bloody past of Fódlan and as such she could never trust him with her aims, and yet...he’d tried so hard.

He’d spent hours upon hours every day, every minute, every spare second learning everything he could about Fódlan’s blood soaked history and he hated that it still wasn’t enough.

Sometimes he wondered if it would ever be good enough. When Marianne and Ignatz launched into an enthused conversation over a book that had been popular when they were children that Claude had never read because he hadn’t even come to Fódlan until recently. When he said something and someone looked at him like he was mad because the phrase was Almyran and Fódlan had no direct equivalent to ‘when frogs jump backwards’.

He felt like he would always be an outsider. When he went home to Almyra he would have missed out on years of events, politics, culture. The world he grew up in would have moved on without him and he’d be an outsider yet again. He wished he could take pride in it somehow. Understand and accept and own in. But for some reason he couldn’t, because he just wanted to belong.

-

He just wished it hadn’t turned out like this. He wished the Kingdom army had communicated with him. He wished the battle didn’t have to be there. He could wish and wish and wish but it wouldn’t bring anyone back.

He watched Felix stare into the distance, a blank look on his face. He watched Caspar and Dorothea lower Bernadetta into a shallow grave.

He watched the mist gather on the grass. He watched healers tending to the wounded, soldiers packing up their kit. The world would move on. It had to. If it didn’t, he’d make it.

He hated this aspect of war. The bit where he saw people changed across the battlefield, charging to their deaths. He would mourn and remember, but he wouldn’t let it weigh him down.

That was how Dimitri had died. That was how Fódlan had ended up as such a bitter, cruel place, tired from five long years of war.

He closed his eyes and pretended he couldn’t smell blood. Maybe some day this field would heal. Maybe flowers would grow.

Flowers in Gronder Field. He wondered what kind the fallen had loved. Maybe he should take the time to ask.

It was sad. Claude hated war. He hated it more than anything he’d ever hated before.

He had to end this before more people died pointlessly. Before there was nothing left.

-

Claude knew what the outfit meant, what the wyvern meant. He didn’t know exactly what it was that had caused his father to come to the decision, but as he was leading Almyran forces into battle…

Well, for one, it meant there was no other heir. They’d chosen him, of all people, to take up the mantle when the time came. It had always been the most likely option, but holding these garments in his hands...this was real.

He couldn’t help but smile about it. He was enough, he was worthy, he got to ride the wyvern he’d helped raise from an egg before he’d left her behind. He got to do the things that Almyran princes had always done before him, and that filled him with a feeling he could barely describe.

It was sort of like coming home, but not quite. It was like breathing in and seeing the sky open up before him. Like watching the stars and seeing that they were brighter than before. It was wonderful and it filled him with hope. Hope he couldn’t share with a single soul.

There were still things he couldn’t share with Nader. A gap between them that time had bridged a little, but to him Claude was still a little boy sometimes. He was a good man, but Claude didn’t expect him to take his aims seriously. So he stayed quiet, and thought of a brighter future to come.

-

No one in the Alliance tended to call him ambitious. Overreaching, sure. A fool? Definitely. Cunning, calculating, far-fetched...he’d been called many thing, but ambitious wasn’t one of them.

He didn’t know why, because he had ambitions that defied even counting. There were so many things that he wanted to achieve and he’d barely even started half of them. Ambitions that kept him moving through the hardest parts of his life, because if he ever gave up then he’d never even get most of he way to seeing his ambitions fulfilled.

That was another thing - he didn’t hold out much hope that he would see all his ambitions achieved. They were the kind of things that could only happen over a long period of time, with people growing up together. People moving into the same spaces and overcoming their differences. It didn’t happen overnight.

He supposed no one called him ambitious because they didn’t know what he was working towards. Maybe they thought he started and ended with wanting to get as many people alive on the other side of this war as possible. Maybe they thought he hadn’t thought past the idea of a new world.

Personally, Claude thought that if he didn’t have a vision, an ambition, he wasn’t fit to rule or decide a thing.

-

People had taken to calling Claude ‘the master tactician’, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that. It was flattering, sure. He got a sense of satisfaction from people seeing him as intelligent, finally seeing the effort he put in, but at the same time it worried him.

It meant that people wouldn’t underestimate him anymore. They’d expect something from him. If they expected too much, or overthought the whole thing, then that was fine. But if they estimated him correctly or his allies started expecting more, there was very little he could do about it.

He didn’t think he was much of a ‘master’. He didn’t have a dozen people working on strategy day in and day out like Edelgard did, and he didn’t have that much of a natural talent for it. He didn’t even direct them on the battlefield. Why was it him who’d acquired the reputation and not their illustrious teacher? He didn’t know, but he wished that had been the case. He’d much rather be their shadow.

He supposed that was it. After so long of the spotlight revealing he was different from everyone else, having it be praising was...strange. Wrong. Definitely something he was completely unused to and unsure how to deal with. Why only now, when his actions were endorsed by the Church, was everyone singing his praises? He already knew.

-

There were lots of reasons Claude enjoyed wyvern riding. He liked the feeling of the wind, for one. And then there was the ability to run away, the bond he shared with his wyvern. But the primary reason, really, was that it gave him a very different perspective on the battlefield.

He was a planner at heart, even if he didn’t do their on the spot strategy in battle (he could, but Byleth was better at it and Claude felt no need to pretend otherwise), so he enjoyed seeing it from an angle that made a little more sense than the chaos down below. He had always hated being in the thick of battle, and he also strongly disliked not knowing exactly what was going on.

Even up in the air, he couldn’t always pinpoint everything, couldn’t quite work out the exact sequence of events. Too much was left unknown, still, but this worked better. If only a little. 

Having the right perspective was everything. Sometimes he spoke to someone who’d been fighting on foot, like Lysithea, and she had no clue what had happened for most of the battle. She blasted the enemies nearby and moved steadily to where the commander could be found. Claude just wouldn’t be able to do something like that; he hated getting the wrong idea, hated being poorly informed.

-

He’d readily admit that victory felt good. He’d always hated losing, even when it came to petty things, so when it came to important tings like a huge battle over Imperial forces, he couldn’t suppress that small childish part of himself that just wanted to win.

Winning battles wasn’t like winning a game of chess, though. In battles, the stakes were much higher than wounded pride, and everyone lose more than a couple of pieces in every bout. So the same feeling of victory...sometimes, it made Claude feel like he was shallow. Like he was losing his humanity.

He had seen what too much conflict could do to a man, and he feared the same for himself. Sometimes, he wondered if his battles as a child had already put him across that line.

Victory was important. They had to win to win the war, yet he couldn’t help but feel bad every time he did. What right did he have to take lives? What right did he have to claim victory while so many around him never would?

He hated to admit it, but he clung to those feelings. Not for long, in case they jeopardised the next victory. But he clung to the sadness just to prove to himself that he was still human.

-

The technique was called Fallen Star, he knew - he didn’t remember exactly how he knew that, but he could have easily picked it up from somewhere. The specifics of how to do it came...well, he supposed they came naturally. Without thinking. His grandfather had never found the time to teach him the bow, after all. He hadn’t needed to.

He knew there was something up with Failnaught. Just holding it in his hands was...he felt something stir within him, and that scared him.

He tried to avoid using the bow. It was for emergencies. For the last resort. It made his skin crawl, so it was for use in the absolute worst case scenario.

Using that special technique, feeling the Fallen Star power surge through him, gave him a rush. It wasn’t a bad feeling. In fact, it made him feel like he could do absolutely anything. He could charge into the centre of an army and come out utterly unscathed. He could slaughter everything that stood in his way, hit even the furthest opponents, he could kill kill kill-

It wasn’t a good feeling, either. He knew, even in the moments after, when his blood rushed to his head and his mind emptied of nothing but battle, that this wasn’t a power mortals were meant to possess.

Fallen Star was the last resort of last resorts. Even if it didn’t feel bad, it wasn’t a feeling he wanted too much of.

-

If there was one thing he worried the most for after everything was sad and done, it was the alliance. Not the Alliance, because those bonds were forged with something that went far beyond blood, far beyond a simple shared experience or tactical advantage.

No, Claude was worried for the alliance between nations. The alliance with the Church. When he was gone and the land was left to everyone else, what would become of the world? The Empire? The Kingdom? Would they cooperate with a common view of the future, or fight for independence from it?

It had an ironic humour to it, he supposed. Fódlan united in part by an outsider at the head of the country that had spent most of its recorded history controlled by one or other of the major powers. Not to mention that they’d unified Fódlan under the banner of a church he didn’t even believe in.

It was such a coincidence, he almost felt as if it couldn’t last. Maybe the alliance would crumble as quickly as it had formed. Friends would turn to enemies. Sworn allies to bitter foes.

But then Claude looked at the bonds he shared with the people of this army, the bonds they had together. This alliance, unified by the Professor, was stronger than that. He had to believe it. He had to believe they carried the strength within them to make this work, or he’d never leave Fódlan and never achieve his dreams.

He had to believe. They needed to stay together without him, because he couldn’t stick around.

-

Failnaught was, he'd always thought, a funny name for a bow. A weapon that never fails, that never misses. Now he had a better understanding of what kind of person Riegan must have been, he understood why the name was so strange.

Sometimes, now he knew the truth, he turned the bow over in his hands and wondered if he should even wield it. It was constructed from the bones of a person (a creature, most likely) who had never wanted someone like him to wield their very being as a weapon to hurt others.

He would continue to wield it until there was no use for such a weapon, that much was unavoidable. He couldn’t put it down, even though it gave him a strange sensation, until the battle was won. Until the world was free of the monsters that haunted it. The monsters that had started this whole mess in the first place.

In his hands he held a weapon that should never fail, made of the bones of a creature that made a fatal mistake. A creature who failed to preserve their own life in the face of overwhelming force.

In a way, he owed it to the poor creature - whose name he didn’t even know - to not fail this time. To avenge the age old wrongdoing that overshadowed all of Fódlan. He would be the one to take the future in his own hands. He would not fail.

-

A new day was dawning on Fódlan. No, a new era. A fresh page for the rest of history to be written on. And he’d drawn the line, written the last words, and turned the page.

Now, it was time to put his pen down and leave the writing of the rest to everyone else.

He’d be sad to leave Fódlan behind when such a momentous thing had happened. Everything he was working for, coming to fruition. Symbolised by a single moment with the sun streaming through the clouds on a now half empty battlefield.

But at the same time, Claude was tired. In fact, he was exhausted. It turned out that fighting through the night, dealing the final blow to a reanimated and incredibly angry corpse, tired you out.

Everything he'd been doing for the past five, six, seven years had been exhausting. Everything he’d been doing for his entire life was exhausting, actually. Fighting every force who didn’t believe in him striving for the new day that had finally, finally dawned.

If he left, he’d put down this tale and pick up a new one. The same pains, with the knife twisted the other way in the wound. But if he stayed to experience this new dawn, he wouldn’t get to rest here either.

It was a new day, and Claude just really wanted to sleep. But, as always, there was more to be done.

-

Before he set off for home, there was one final thing he had to do. Claude went back to Gronder Field, each native to Faerghus from the army following behind him. This was something that had to be done.

There were very few headstones, but many stones had been set out to mark where the dead had been buried. Gilbert the knight, the late Duke Fraldarius. People so connected to his army that Claude had barely even known. He wanted Annette crumple and wondered how he had ever missed it.

And...the grave of a king. A simple dirt mound, marked only with a stone and a sentinel.

“Dedue!” It was Mercedes who called, but the man in question didn’t look up. Claude didn’t really blame him. What had any of them done for him, when his king was slaughtered? He owed them no attention, he need pay them no mind, and yet…

He felt a kinship with the fallen king of Faerghus. A connection he couldn’t exactly put into words, but one he knew was there. It was a bond never formed that he still felt he had betrayed.

“He was a good king,” Claude said.

“He was not,” came Dedue’s reply. “He was a poor king, overtaken by emotion and grief. He put all thoughts of the future out of his mind for a single point. He was a poor king, but a good man.” In response, Claude could only mourn what he had never known.

-

The eastern wind would guide him home. In Almyra, it was called the verdant wind - it blew over the mountain tops, carrying the final bursts of Faerghus’ cold climate. It brought rain, occasionally snow, and now it was carrying him on the back of a wyvern.

He’d struggled to say goodbye face to face. He was sure, by now, that they all knew exactly where he was from. He’d never really said it, but he’d stopped hiding it. Saying goodbye wasn’t any easier than opening up.

He didn’t know how often he’d be able to come back to Fódlan. It had been his home for so many years. Nearly half of his life had been spent in this land of tall trees, Crests, and the friendly faces he’d grown to love.

People like Lysithea...may not live long enough to see him again. The wind would move and change and blow her much further away than he could ever go if Linhardt or Hanneman couldn’t find a solution.

But he tried not to think about that too much. Just as he could cross the mountains this way, he could do the same for his return. Just as he could, so could they. So could letter couriers.

This was an ending. The wind also signalled a beginning. In Almyra, the verdant wind was the start of a new year. They were winds that brought light, and change. It was fitting, really, that he should travel at this time. That such a Fódlan thing should send him home.

-

It wasn’t...he hadn’t planned it, not exactly. Not completely, anyway. He hadn’t factored personal relationships into his grand plan for the future of Fódlan.

It was more that Lorenz just wouldn’t leave him alone. He had more sense than Claude had expected him to, and he got letters through to him before Claude had even considered starting up any correspondence.

One thing led to another, and he was there. On a warm Fódlan evening, after a successful day of discussions, with the man he may or may not have fallen for. 

He had never been one for romantic feelings. Never even once. He didn’t get childish crushes and he never understood the flattery and compliments and flirting and courting that had surrounded, but rarely included, him for his whole life.

Lorenz was particularly smooth, though, and he’d managed to worm his way into Claude’s heart. Somehow. That heart which he’d been so determined to keep closed off, hidden from everyone…

“I know I’ve said it before, but I did rather miss you,” Lorenz said. The small distance that remained between them, emotional rather than physical, closed. It vanished. And Claude was standing next to the man he definitely loved.

“The same to you,” he said, frantically scrabbling for the words he’d wanted to say all this time. He was not used to romance. Was this romance yet?

“I know the talks have only just begun, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to the prospect of you vanishing again.”

“We’ll just have to make the most of the time we have, then.”

-

“Welcome to the Officers Academy,” Claude said, and Byleth caught two things they’d already been expecting: sarcasm, making it very clear that nothing about this place was welcoming, and a very fake smile. “Anything you want to know? I’m mostly familiar with the Alliance students.”

“What’s it like to live here, for you?” they asked. Their situation was different to Claude’s own, but...maybe more similar than, say, Dimitri’s experience.

“Well, that depends on whether I’m allowed to speak freely or not,” he said. His casual tone didn’t match the words. He was sizing them up. He wanted to know where they stood.

“I’m asking for your honest, real opinion,” they replied. “Not whatever you feed to the world at large.”

“It’s Fódlan in a nutshell, I suppose,” he said. “With an emphasis on the nut. No one in this place is even close to what you’d describe as normal. When it comes to students, we’re a bit of a dysfunctional family. We come from all sorts of places and backgrounds.”

“And you?” they asked.

Claude’s smile hardened in the blink of an eye. Did he think he was subtle? He was harder to read than the others, but… “Don’t you worry about me,” he said. “Let’s just spend the next year or so getting to know each other How does that sound?”

It sounded like a deflection. Like truths he didn’t want to speak. But if the truth of his Crest and how he’d come to be confined here was something he wouldn’t speak, then that was fine. There was a lot going on, after all, and they had plenty of time to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading! :D if you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment or perhaps following me on twitter @samariumwriting particularly if you're at all interested in me complaining about my degree and academic articles. I also have lots of other works on FE and particularly on Claude so pls consider checking them out.


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